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Positive tests for performance enhancing drugs are extremely rare in the AFL. Most recent anti-doping cases have involved positive tests to illicit substances – such as cocaine – that are deemed performance-enhancing only on game day.

Local leagues, such as the state leagues, are subject to the same anti-doping rules as the AFL. Players found to have used PEDs can receive bans of up to four years.

Unlike Melbourne’s Joel Smith, whose late 2023 positive was for the presence of cocaine on a match day, the state league player’s alleged breach of the doping code was for a substance that is banned both in and outside of competition.

Smith was part of a long-running SIA investigation and received a lengthy ban of four years and three months, for a match-day positive on August 20, 2023 against Hawthorn, and for four separate rule violations, including trafficking or attempted trafficking of cocaine under anti-doping rules. There were no criminal charges.

Smith had been provisionally suspended since October 9, 2023 following an in-competition positive test.

Positive tests to substances that are banned in all circumstances – such as human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, testosterone and certain peptides – are uncommon in the AFL.

Collingwood pair Josh Thomas and Lachie Keeffe received two-year bans from 2015 after testing positive to PED Clenbuterol, having admitted the banned substance probably entered their bodies after taking illicit drugs during the off-season.

The 34 then past and present Essendon players who were suspended for the 2016 season did not test positive for banned a banned substance. Instead, anti-doping authorities suspended them on circumstantial evidence that they were administered with the banned peptide Thymosin beta-4.

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